


The Sweetest Medicine Is A Bitter Pill

by badxwolfxrising



Series: The Mysterious Couple 'Verse [1]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alcohol, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst and Porn, Angst and Romance, Awkward Flirting, Character Study, Comfort Sex, Comfort/Angst, Domestic Bliss, Drama & Romance, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s02e08 The Impossible Planet, Episode: s02e08-09 The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit, Eventual Smut, F/M, First Time, Flirting, Fluff, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Smut, Foreplay, Hurt/Comfort, I bet you didn't know carpets and mortgages were erotic huh?, Innuendo, Introspection, Krop Tor, Massage, Missing Scene, Mutual Pining, Past Relationship(s), Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Psychic Bond, Romance, Sexual Tension, Sharing a Bed, Smut, Sorry Not Sorry, Telepathic Bond, burn with me bitches, if the Doctor had a guitar he'd totally be playing Bryan Adams for Rose, that time the Doctor got a hard on talking about HGTV, these tags are a mess and so am i, these two are so horny on main for each other that seeing the other in pajamas is a turn on
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:55:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24383914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badxwolfxrising/pseuds/badxwolfxrising
Summary: Stranded on Krop Tor with no hope of recovering the TARDIS, Rose and the Doctor are forced to confront their feelings for each other head on.
Relationships: Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler
Series: The Mysterious Couple 'Verse [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1760932
Comments: 10
Kudos: 65





	The Sweetest Medicine Is A Bitter Pill

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to tumblr frands @epicmurderlizards and @adorabubb13 for burning with me and betaing this fic.

The Doctor flung open his door right as Rose raised her fist to knock, almost as though he’d been expecting her (because he had). “Can’t sleep?” he asked wryly, loosening the knot in his tie and slipping it over his head, his impassive face giving little indication that he was subtly undressing her with his eyes even as he undressed himself. Though he was an imaginative man by nature, Rose’s ‘pajamas’ were scant enough that his eyes were able to do most of the work involved in picturing what the landscape under her slinky blue vest top and matching lace knickers might look like with little additional effort on his brain’s part. This was especially convenient because the way the semi-sheer fabric clung to her breasts was scandalous enough to make his control slip momentarily, cock twitching as every neuron in his temporal lobe misfired at once.

“Of course not,” Rose said, her mouth going dry as he casually scanned her mostly bare body. It wasn’t unusual for her to sleep in knickers and a vest top but for some reason tonight she felt abnormally exposed, perhaps because the Sanctuary Base was unnervingly foreign and the expression on the Doctor’s face was impossible to decipher. “Feel too much like a tin can caught in a hurricane. Besides that the wind is creeping me out...it sounds like voices. I swear I heard someone calling my name. No way I’m sleeping in there alone, figured I’d come and see what you were up to.”

“Lots of things sound like lots of things when you’re anxious,” he said, his brusque tone coming off as frustratingly dismissive and clinical to his jittery companion. Padding back into the dormitory, he flung his tie on the dresser and beckoned for Rose, and after a moment’s hesitation she followed behind him. Grabbing his blazer off the chair, he produced a small flask from the depths of one of his many voluminous pockets and poured two fingers of amber liquid into a dented tin cup on the desk. The flask was made of a dark and highly reflective metal that shone like obsidian, the dead owner’s name carved in symbols like clockwork. For such a lightweight and small thing, it sure felt heavy in the Doctor’s hand as he tried to push the face of the man it had belonged to out of his head. The loss of the TARDIS had stirred up old memories that the Doctor was desperate to bury under the surface again.

Rose wrinkled her nose in distaste, images of banana daiquiris and multigrain anti-oil on her mind as she struggled to remember the last time she’d seen him take a drink. “Is that whiskey?” she asked skeptically, closing the door behind her. 

“Legend has it that the night he died, Dylan Thomas drank eighteen shots of whiskey and that’s what killed him. It was actually pneumonia, but that doesn’t make for as good a story,” he quipped, swallowing the contents of his cup with a grimace. It was hard to believe some humans had the cheek to claim to enjoy the turpentine-flavored spirit for its taste rather than the intoxicating effects rendered by continued consumption. “Want one?”

“No...maybe. I don't know,” she replied uncomfortably, crossing her arms over her chest. In the past it would’ve been an easy yes, but if her time with Jimmy Stone had taught her anything it was that she functioned much better when she was firing on all cylinders, her judgment unclouded from booze or whatever else. The impulse to become comfortably numb when things got tough was all too understandable and frankly, too alluring. “Best not, I guess. One of us at least should probably be sober, just in case.”

“Suit yourself, I’ll rage against the dying of the light on my own then. I’m not even close to drunk but I’ll have one for both of us anyway, it’s not every day you lose the only TARDIS in the universe and strand Jackie Tyler’s only daughter on a shitty rock orbiting a black hole,” he said tersely, shoulders slumping. “I really bollocksed this one up, Rose. I don’t even have half a plan to fix it.”

She sighed, uncrossing her arms. This was precisely the sort of spiral she’d been worried he might throw himself into and she was currently trying to cope with her own guilt over the idea of Jackie sitting at home, waiting up for a daughter who would never return. “It’s not your fault, Doctor. Don’t beat yourself up over it, you couldn’t possibly have known this would happen. It is what it is.”

“That’s kind of you to say but of course it’s my fault, Rose. Who else’s fault would it be?” he sighed, scrubbing at his face in exasperation. “I even said while we were landing that the TARDIS sounded queasy but stupid me...I ignored the warning signs and lead us headlong into danger because I thought I knew better, as per usual.”

“Why does it have to be anyone’s fault?” she challenged. “I laughed it off too, so if anything I’m just as responsible for us being here as you are for encouraging you to ignore it. Look...I just thought maybe you’d want some company, cause I know I’m feeling sorta lonely and isolated right now and I thought you might be too. But you’re hard to be around when you’re like this, all self-deprecating and hopeless. I really don’t think you should be drinking, certainly not eighteen shots worth of whiskey anyway. You’re maudlin enough on an okay day but this day is not okay for either of us and I don’t know that I can hold it together if you’re falling apart too.”

“I was mostly kidding about doing eighteen shots,” he mumbled. “You’d lose consciousness before you could drink eighteen shots. If you’re human. Allegedly. Which I’m not. Thought it might be fun to try for science though.”

“Well I wish you wouldn’t joke like that cause I’m already worried about you,” she said, fighting to keep the tremble out of her voice. “I’m not an expert in Time Lord biology, I don’t know how much is too much for you but I know if the situation were reversed you’d probably be worried about me, right?”

“If the situation were reversed I would’ve taken the shot with you and not made a bloody kerfuffle out of nothing,” he bristled. “I’m a doctor, Rose, I know my own limits. I don’t need you to mother hen me over a couple shots of whiskey on a bad day. My digestive system alone is more complex than your entire nervous system, spare me the lecture on something you can’t even begin to understand.”

“Alright, goodnight, I’m not going to let you be a prick to me just because I’m worried about you. You never drink anymore and now you are but for some reason you’re acting like I’m the bad guy for being concerned,” she said, moving towards the door with tears prickling hotly at the corners of her eyes. “No thanks, I’m good on fighting with you to take care of yourself, I’ll take my chances alone with the spooky wind voices.”

“Wait,” he said softly, grabbing her by the elbow. “Please don’t go Rose...you’re right, I’m sorry. It’s just...I’m having a really, really hard time with this. I guess I hadn’t stopped to think just how much of my identity was tied up in the TARDIS and now that it’s gone, I’m having a bit of an existential crisis. Who is the last of the Time Lords without the ability to travel in time?”

“You’re still you,” Rose insisted adamantly. “You don’t need the TARDIS to keep being clever and compassionate, you don’t need a time machine to be kind. The Doctor helps people, that’s what makes you you. You don’t need the TARDIS to do that.”

He looked at the floor, trying to conceal the blush that had crept across his cheeks, embarrassed to have ever thought that Rose would be capable of judging him like that. “I guess a part of me was worried that if I didn’t have the TARDIS that maybe you wouldn’t want to stick around.”

Wrapping her arms around him, she rested her cheek against his chest and listened to the rhythm of his hearts beating a nervous tattoo because she couldn’t bear to see the heartbreak etched in painful lines on his face. No matter how much she felt she telegraphed her love and adoration for him, he still didn’t seem to believe it. “Don’t be daft. I told you forever, didn’t I? There was no TARDIS-required clause in that promise.”

“Suppose you did,” he answered hesitantly. “But no one ever reads the fine print and I didn’t know if forever was conditional or not. I mean, I wouldn’t really blame you if you didn’t want to rent a car with me after everything I’ve put you through, let alone play house. I know I’ve never been great at domestics.”

“Don’t bother trying to scare me off, I told you before that you’re stuck with me. Besides, I’ll need you to cosign on the mortgage anyway because I’m young and I have no credit. Some conditions may apply though,” she said, tongue poking between her teeth.

Amused, his eyebrows titled towards his forehead. No bank was giving out loans or mortgages to wayward space vagabonds either, but it was an amusing idea to entertain all the same. “Oh?”

“Yeah, you give me one of your famous shoulder rubs and share whatever snacks you’re currently smuggling in your pockets because the protein drinks of the future leave a lot to be desired,” she teased. “Besides, it’s not a real sleepover without snacks.”

“If I’d known we were having a pajama party I would’ve prepared better,” he said, hopping onto the bed, relieved to turn the subject away from the past and his feelings. ”I’m afraid I don’t have much in the way of snacks because I stress ate all my jelly babies five minutes after we got here but I suppose we could gossip about boys and braid each other’s hair. That’s sleepover stuff, right?”

“Shut up,” she laughed, clumsily hoisting herself up onto the bunk. Sitting carefully between his thighs she swallowed the lump in her throat, hyper aware of the feeling of him pressed against the small of her back. At least a dozen times they’d sat together on a foreign planet in a bunk not that different from this one but never in such dire straits or advanced stages of undress and most certainly not with a half-tipsy Doctor flying at half mast. Dry and cool, his thumbs pressed into her shoulders, his skilled fingers urging tense muscles to relax and unfurl. Forgetting herself for a moment, Rose moaned in pleasure, melting back against him.

“Feel good?” he asked, the smirk detectable in his voice. Splaying his palms firmly against her shoulders, he skimmed his hands down either side of her ribcage, permitting himself to let just the tips of his fingers graze the sides of her breasts .

“It ruins it when you’re smug, but yes, thank you,” she shot back, wondering if he could sense her blushing or feel the heat rushing to her core. With hardly anything between them and his hard-on pressing against her bum, it was hard not to fantasize what it would be like if he were audacious enough to fondle her breasts through her top, press his lips against her throat, or dip those delicate fingers under the waistband of her knickers... Realizing he had stopped with his hands on her waist, she peered uncertain over her shoulder at him. “Doctor? You alright?”

“I’m always alright,” he replied too quickly, his breath warm on the back of her neck. Grasping her by the hips, he kneaded her lower back and bum, his touch more assertive than gentle, more sensuous than friendly, emboldened by the psychic flashes of Rose’s imagined fantasies of the two of them together. It wasn’t as though he was deliberately peeking at her thoughts but being a touch telepath it was sort of hard not to overhear them.This was beginning to feel less like a platonic back rub and more like something...well, something quite a bit more intimate. He mumbled swears under his breath, the words incomprehensible. “Blimey.”

“What is it?” she asked, holding her breath, the tension unbearable. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing at all,” he answered quickly, his hands moving back up to her shoulders. Clearing his throat, he hesitated before speaking again, trying and failing to distract himself from the random and filthy flashes he was getting of Rose’s thoughts. “Tell me about our house, the proper one with doors and things. If I’m going to have to cosign on the mortgage, I ought to know what I’m getting into.”

“Oh,” she said, caught off guard by the way he said ‘our house’. After his lukewarm reaction to her earlier suggestion in the mess hall that they could share a mortgage (and by extension, a life), she’d driven herself crazy trying to decide what exactly that interaction had meant and whether or not the look in his eyes had been pity or something else. Rose was used to speaking in hypotheticals when it came to conversing with the Doctor but this seemed to be a different game of pretend, perhaps his way of asking for reassurance without letting himself become too openly vulnerable. “Well...I suppose it’s probably somewhere in the country. Or maybe at the beach? I dunno...someplace near nature definitely, where there’s not a lot of light pollution but the sunsets are still nice. I’m picturing a big open yard, lots of trees, maybe even a proper garden with a koi pond or something. It’d probably have to be a fixer up, they’re cheaper and it would give you something to do. And the front door would have to be blue, of course.”

The Doctor chuckled, the barest hint of a smile in his voice. His fingers tangled in the hair at the nape of Rose’s neck and he had to resist the sudden urge to bury his face there and inhale the intoxicating scent of her, delicate flowers growing over warm sandalwood and sweet vanilla, flushed skin just begging to be nibbled. “Of course the door would be blue. Think I saw on GHTV once that blue doors on a house symbolize prosperity or tranquility. They’re strongly anti-carpet on GHTV too, if I recall. Our house would definitely need hardwood floors. And subway tiles in the kitchen and bathroom, I always fancied the way that looks. And a sunken living room with a huge fireplace and spiral staircase, maybe a hidden library behind a door disguised as a bookshelf. Terrace houses would have to be out; too small, too close together, too public. I’d want a lot of room to roam and at least a little privacy.”

“Privacy...yeah, of course, can’t be having any Nosy Nellies reporting on us when one of your science experiments inevitably blows up our shed,” she said, although what she was actually envisioning was less like a science experiment gone wrong and more like the Doctor throwing her down in front of a fireplace, shagging her rotten, and waking up the neighbors with their collective cries of ecstasy. “I’m okay with subway tiles in the bathroom, but I’m torn between wanting a Roman bath like that kid in _PeeWee’s Big Adventure_ or an old Victorian clawfoot tub.”

“Why not both? It’s our fantasy house after all, dream big,” he said as nonchalantly as anyone who got an erection talking about GHTV could manage. It was easier to pretend he had some kind of kink for natural hardwood than to acknowledge the thousand and one complicated feelings he had for Rose Tyler, at least a hundred of which were just different tantric sex positions he wanted to test drive on the journey to shagging her in as many places as possible.

“So how many bedrooms does this fantasy house have, Doctor?” Rose asked, biting her lip and holding her breath, waiting to see if he would call her bluff or take the bait. 

“Oh just the one, I’d think that’s all we’d need,” he muttered brazenly, finally daring to reach underneath her vest top and gently caress her breasts, his thumbs tracing delicate patterns around the areola until her nipples pulled into aching twin peaks. “One bedroom, with a massive fireplace carved out of blue lace agate, a Roman bath ensuite, a loveseat big enough for canoodling, and a skylight over the bed. Even if we can’t travel the stars anymore...at least we could make love underneath them.”

“Why wait?” she gasped, turning to straddle him, the months of pent up sexual frustration finally boiling over like a screaming hot kettle that’s been left on too long.. “Life is uncertain, no time like the present.”

“Slow down. It took almost two years to get here, I want to take a moment to enjoy the scenery,” he murmured into her open mouth, giving her lower lip an experimental nibble, categorizing the lush and unique taste of her. Reaching between them, he slowly ran his hand up her thigh, stopping to tease at the lacey hem of her knickers with his fingers, thrilling at the delightful little shiver and moan it elicited from her. Probing underneath the damp fabric, he pressed one finger between her folds and hummed in satisfaction when she bucked against his hand, already slick to the touch. “There will be plenty of time for that, after I pull these off with my teeth and make you scream so loud that everyone left on this base will be some combination of horny and uncomfortable.”

Rose blushed, unsure how to acknowledge such an enticingly filthy proposition directly. She’d slept with two men (and she used that term loosely) in her life, Jimmy and Mickey, both of whom had been mediocre in bed at best and selfish at the worst, treating her pleasure as something secondary and inconsequential to their own. Who was this broody and smouldering Doctor, who talked like the romantic hero in one of the drippy bodice rippers Jackie sometimes snuck into the loo? “If I had known you got hard for hardwood floors, I would’ve suggested solving a mystery at a quaint New New England bed and breakfast ages ago,” she sighed, flexing her hips in a desperate search for friction, which he rewarded by giving her bum a cheeky little squeeze. 

“I think you don’t need to be a Time Lord to look back in time to ten minutes ago and remember that I was hard long before we were discussing hardwood,” he said with dry aplomb, shifting just enough to provide her with a glancing physical reminder of his arousal. “What can I say? Whiskey has always lit me up and you...well, you’ve always had a similar effect on me too, even before I changed. It’s a relief to not have to try and hide it for once. You can only redirect the blood flow away from an organ for so long before there are side effects Rose and...ah, nevermind about that.”

“Well that certainly puts whiskey dick in a new perspective,” Rose giggled, bubbling and frothing with anxiety. She was so used to the Doctor deflecting when it came to talking about himself that the sudden torrent of honesty was just about giving her whiplash. It was actually happening. Her and the Doctor were about to shag, they were both being honest, albeit incredibly awkward (but still somehow sexy), nothing was ever gonna be the same again, and most implausibly, it had all started as a casual conversation about houses and mortgages and the exact kind of domestics that the Doctor used to swear he didn’t do. The incongruity of it all was enough to boggle the mind. Searching for the right words, she tentatively stroked the stubble on his jaw. “I’m...I’m glad you don’t have to hide it anymore, either. I think you probably already knew this...but I’ve wanted this for a long time. You and me...more than just holding hands.”

He had always known, of course he had, though he’d always been too afraid to let himself give in and acknowledge that he wanted it too. _Naming a thing gave it power._ The Doctor had been smitten with Rose from the get go, that first moment he’d grabbed her hand in the basement of Henrik’s and whispered, _“Run!”_ , the ghosts of other lovers in her sprinting silhouette. Even now, it seemed easier to go through the formulaic motions of the act than to talk about the feelings surrounding it, which he liked to tell himself were ‘too complicated’ as a justification to not spend time thinking about why he’d made the choices he had. At first, he had loved Rose because she reminded him of love and life before the war, before he’d betrayed every principle and extinguished everything he’d ever held dear. But the more he’d gotten to know her for her fierce, youthful passion, the more he loved her for all the ways she was different from anyone else he’d ever known. 

He’d had a wife on Gallifrey, as had been both required and expected of him, an arranged marriage that suited the political needs of both of their families, a union born out of necessity and convenience rather than love. After years and several children together there had been a comfortable and quiet sort of affection there, grown in a rocky, sun-warmed soil he’d previously thought barren. It had been pleasant and comfortable sure, but not the sort of soul-consuming love that inspired epic poems or erotic art, and indeed not the sort of love that kept him homebound. The part of him that couldn’t let go of who he’d been on Gallifrey still felt an urge to reject the truth, that a mere human being had managed to crawl so far under his skin that he’d let himself become careless and vulnerable in the pursuit of her affection, to feel a rush like the fire of regeneration every time he grabbed her hand. The other part of him, the rebel who’d fled Gallifrey, delighted in the idea of committing the ultimate perversion and polluting Time Lord blood by mating with a ‘lesser species’ like a human. Did he dare to imagine a future where he made love to Rose under the stars, her belly swollen with their hybrid child? Would it lessen his burden to try and build a family again, creating a timeline where he was no longer the last of the Time Lords by default? But that was madness, entertaining such ideas when he couldn’t even bring himself to admit that he loved her out loud and he squashed the idea deep down inside with the memories of those long gone, knowing such a thing would only be possible if Rose secretly wanted it too.

“This is getting in the way,” he growled, catching the hem of her vest top and tugging it up and over her torso until she grabbed the fabric and helped him pull it the rest of the way over her head. Confronted with her naked chest, which was twice as spectacular as he ever could’ve imagined, the only thing he could muster was an awed, “Blimey, you’re beautiful. For a human.”

“You need a new line,” she quipped, but there was no malice in it. There was something familiar and comforting about hearing those words repeated, a call back to a different time and other versions of themselves, when things had concurrently been simpler and yet incredibly complex. Shifting uncomfortably, she looked away from him, shy in the face of the surreal reality where more than a year of handholding, adoring looks, and shameless flirting had finally culminated in this; both of them crammed into the Doctor’s bunk on a dingy space base wearing nothing but their unmentionables and nervous looks, as skittish as two teenaged virgins the night of their Prom.

Rose was as open and honest as she’d always been but the more the Doctor’s feelings for her had intensified, the more he’d struggled with being honest about them. Once upon a time he’d been so starved for some genuine warmth and compassion that he’d just spilled the truth about Gallifrey and the Time War all over her without a filter or a second thought, his heart soaking up the empathy in her eyes like a panacea and honestly, it had been addictive. He’d shown her some of the absolute darkest parts of himself when they’d still been little more than strangers, she’d shown him nothing but compassion in return, and that was probably as close to absolution as he could ever hope to get.

The idea of giving the universe power over him by admitting out loud that he loved the human who understood him better than anyone else alive and yet still knew only half his secrets just seemed terribly dangerous in a tempting of the fates sort of way. People he loved had been used against him before and probably would be again, he couldn’t bear the idea that it might happen to Rose of all people. No...the Doctor could show her he loved her without saying it, it was safer for everyone that way. While he didn’t always understand humans, he thought he understood well enough how humans used their bodies to say the things they couldn’t with words. After all, the Time Lords were all dead, no one was left to report him to the Council for ‘committing perversions’ with a human and even if there had been he suspected that making love with Rose would be worth however many pounds of flesh his elders would’ve extracted as payment for his sins. 

“Sometimes I think we talk way too much but say far too little,” he said softly and without a trace of irony, knowing perfectly well he was talking less about her and more about himself. He hoped she knew well enough by now to read between the lines and intuit the things he lacked the courage to say but communicating with humans had always been a crapshoot for him, as prone to illogical behavior as they were for an ‘intelligent’ species. With years between him and Gallifrey’s indoctrination (ha!) he had gotten much better at understanding and responding appropriately to human emotions but that was what terrified him about Rose; he didn’t just sense her emotions at times, he felt them as keenly as though they were his own and it terrified him that he was no longer sure where her wants and desires ended and his began.

Leaning into his touch, Rose closed her eyes, a tiny part of her still in shock that this was actually happening and wondering if he was feeling just as conflicted as she was internally. “You’re not wrong...but actions speak louder than words,” she replied, hoping he would take it as encouragement rather than a shallow platitude. 

“So they do,” he murmured, closing the distance between them with a sweetly evocative kiss. Burying his fingers in the hair at the nape of her neck, he pressed his forehead against hers and whispered a plea for reassurance between her parted lips, “Promise you won’t break my hearts, Rose Tyler?”

“Only if you promise to never leave me behind,” she whispered back, wrapping her arms around him and kissing him with the fierce urgency of someone eager to make up for lost time. Every muscle in Rose’s body was pulled taut as a violin string and she was ready to vibrate out of her skin in search of relief. Sitting in his lap straddling his thighs was still not intimate enough contact, she wanted to be pressed skin to naked skin, close enough for her to feel his arousal and that he could feel just how hot she burned for him. “Please Doctor...I need you,” she whimpered, coming dangerously close to begging.

“Where do you need me?” he asked coyly, softly caressing her breasts, tracing lazy circles around her nipples with his thumbs before dropping his hands to her hips to tug lightly on the waistband of her knickers.

“Wherever you wanna go first,” she exhaled shakily, arching her back and thrusting out her chest.

“Don’t cop out, that’s not what I asked. I could just snog you and read your mind you know,” he said casually. “All those things you believe you’re thinking quietly in your own head? You might as well be whispering them right in my ear every time we touch. But where’s the fun in that for me? That’s cheating. I want to hear you say it.”

“Oh, so you admit you were already cheating then this whole time, Mr. Hardwood Floors? You’re so sure you’ve got my number but you didn’t stop to think that maybe I’ve got yours, too,” she said with a smirk, reaching between them to stroke him through his pants. “My turn to play doctor, and I’m playing Dr. Ruth”,” she purred, affecting an exaggerated German accent. “So...do you need to hear me say it because it turns you on to hear me say the things you’re thinking about doing to me out loud, or because you like to have control and you’re afraid of what would happen if you actually let yourself lose it for once?”

Feigning shock and offense, he gave an exaggerated huff, his eyebrows quirking towards his forehead. ‘Why Ms. Tyler, I’ve never heard the likes. I have half a mind to punish you for taking that insolent tone with me.”

“Oh I wish a Time Lord would,” she taunted, biting her lower lip enticingly. “But I think you’re the one who requires punishing right now, for peeking at my fantasies without permission, you naughty boy. Quid pro quo, Doctor. You already know what I was thinking about...now it’s your turn to share with the rest of the class. Truth or dare, tell me what you want me to do to you...or take off your pants and then mine.”

“I don’t remember consenting to this game,” he mumbled, scratching the back of his neck. It was a little unsettling just how well Rose knew him without the benefit of being able to read his mind. “I just came here to have a good time and I’m honestly feeling so attacked right now.”

“I mean if you prefer we could always put our clothes back on and play checkers instead,” she offered, her mouth twitching with the effort of trying to maintain a straight face.

“Absolutely not, you tease,” he growled, half-feral. Throwing her down on the bed, he straddled her hips with his knees and pinned her hands above her head, loving the way he felt her pulse quicken where his fingers encircled her wrists. The feeling of her heat through the fabric of his pants, so close and still frustratingly distant, was maddening. Tutting, he fingered the lacey waistband of her knickers. “Yeah, these definitely need to go.”

“You first,” she said breathlessly. “I know it’s your prerogative to disregard instructions you don’t agree with but I believe I was pretty specific about the parameters of the dare. Lose the pants, Time Lord.”

The Doctor rolled his eyes but reached for his waistband, resting all his weight on one elbow. “Have you always been this bossy?” he asked mildly, pulling his pants over his hips with one hand and using his foot to drag them the rest of the way down his legs, kicking them off when they reached his ankles.

“Show off. You think you’re so impressive,” she said with a smile, straining her hips to bring herself closer to him, the sodden scrap of lace between her thighs now the only thing that separated their naked bodies.

“I am so impressive,” he said softly, echoing another ghost. Kissing a trail down her jaw and across her collarbones, he briefly laved each of her nipples in turn with his tongue, savoring the subtle way she squirmed underneath him. When he ran his tongue around her navel and snagged his teeth on her knickers, she bucked her hips hard enough to make his teeth rattle. Carefully, he hooked his thumbs through her waistband, gripped the lace at the apex of her thighs with his teeth, and pulled until the garment slid down over her hips. Mindful not to tear the delicate fabric, he tugged slowly and deliberately until he’d gone past her knees and then grabbed the knickers, tossing them over his shoulder. Clearing his throat, he dropped into a thick Scottish brogue. “So here we are at last then, you timorous beastie. Such a long chase it’s been.”

“Please talk dirty to me in that exact accent for the rest of forever, thanks,” she moaned.

The Doctor inhaled, deeply overwhelmed by the sight of Rose stripped down and flushed with arousal, more lovely than any woman he’d ever had the privilege to see naked. “You really are beautiful, and not just for a human. Hot damn.”

“Shut up. I bet you say that to all the girls,” she said in what was meant to be a teasing tone but came out much thornier, the memories of the last human, a 51st century spaceship of French royalty, a former companion, and the insecurity and doubt that had followed simmering right under the surface. There had always been at least a little bit of that doubt, especially in the beginning: what was a man as extraordinary as the Doctor doing slumming around with some A-level drop out chav from a council estate? Cassandra had vocalized the worst of these fears when she’d inhabited Rose’s body and though the Doctor frequently offered reassurance that he found her brilliant, part of her still couldn’t help but wonder what exactly it was he saw in her and whether or not she was just a mere distraction for a being whose lifespan dwarfed her own. The fear that his affection for her might one day wane with his interest had been plaguing her since before the whole disaster with France.

“Oh Rose,” he said guiltily, knowing exactly where the sudden trace of bitterness had come from. There had never been a proper discussion about what had happened in the aftermath of Madame du Pompadour and the clockwork androids but he would’ve needed to be blind to not see how betrayed and abandoned she still felt, even now. “Whatever you might think happened in France, you have to know, and I’m sorry if I ever made you doubt it, but there was never anyone else for me but you. Certainly not a thirsty French courtesan who entered my mind without permission, even if she did have an impressive resume. Reinette was interested in me and I’ll admit that I found the attention flattering but only because seeing you with Mickey again made me feel a thousand times more jealous and territorial than I was comfortable admitting at the time. I guess a small part of me wanted to make you jealous too, as embarrassing as it is to own that.”

“You swear?” she asked, sitting up. Admittedly the idea that the Doctor would be jealous of anyone, let alone Mickey, when he’d managed to capture the attention of a beautiful French aristocrat seemed a bit improbable but the earnest expression on his face spoke volumes.

“I know what you’re thinking but I swear to Rassilon, that’s the truth,” he reiterated solemnly as she crawled into his lap, pressing her finger against his lips. “If you don’t believe me I wouldn’t blame you but I can show you the memory if you need to-”

“Stop explaining, I believe you,” she said, wrapping her legs around his back and gasping when she felt the tip of his cock slip slickly through her folds, sending a thrill of electricity straight to her core, a promise of the things to come. “Please Doctor, I need you. I’ve always needed you, just you, and right now, I need to feel anything but the crushing anxiety about what comes next. I’m tired of talking about it, we’ve been teasing each other long enough, I want you inside me.”

“Rose,” he groaned, her name a prayer on his lips. Wrapping his arms around her waist, he rolled his hips, finally, blissfully sheathing himself in the welcoming warmth of her soft and yielding body. Swallowing her cries with his mouth he dropped his hands to grasp her bum, holding her firm and steady as they moved easily against each other, lost in velvet ecstasy, the slick push and pull of a consummation that was long overdue. The desire to initiate a mental bond through their physical one was intense and irresistible; when he felt the tentative push of her thoughts against his own he opened the door wide and let her wash over him like rain, reveling in the glow of her adoration... consequences be damned. Everything shimmered around them, a subtle indication that their intertwined timelines, which had been in flux, were weaving more tightly together. Inside of Rose a dormant spark awakened and the part of her that had been the golden goddess Bad Wolf came alive again, prowling and searching for her Doctor, bristling with unquenchable need. Once again, she turned stark impossibility into improbable reality, changing at a molecular level, becoming something new all over again as the strands of their fates drew together. _How can I let go of this? I bring life._

She felt the shift even if unconsciously as he enveloped her, filling her mind and body with indescribable but nonetheless pleasurable sensations as the tendrils of his thoughts tickled across her synapses, whispering promises still to be kept. The tension that had been pooling low in her belly reached its zenith and she dug her fingernails into the scant meat of his back, biting his shoulder to muffle her cries as her orgasm swept through her like a summer storm. Holding her tight against him, the flutter and pull of her muscles and the soft caress of her mind around him was enough to send him tumbling over the edge after her. They rocked each other through their aftershocks, too drunk on endorphins to pay much mind to the source of the angry pounding on the other side of the door.

“Oi, do you two mind keeping it down? I know it’s midnight but some of us are trying to work here!” Toby’s irritated voice called from the other side of the door, knocking again for emphasis.

“Sorry!” they cried in breathless unison, waiting until the sound of retreating footsteps to lean against each other, dissolving into a fit of helpless giggles that made their still sensitive nerve endings tingle not unpleasantly. Once they had regained their composure the Doctor tenderly cupped Rose’s chin, drawing her into a long and lingering kiss. “I don’t know why on Earth we waited so long but I’d very much like to do that with you again, sometime in the near to immediate future.”

“How immediate?” she asked coquettishly, batting her eyelashes for added effect.

He considered the question. “If your schedule is open...what do you say about right now? Can you fit me in before we have to do laundry for the next however many months?”

Smiling, she pulled him back down to the mattress. “I’ve always got an open appointment for a good Doctor.”

“What about a good tutor?” he asked, waggling his eyebrows. “I could teach you a romance language, probably not French, maybe Italian or Portuguese. I’m a _very_ cunning linguist, Rose.”

“Oh, I’ll bet you are,” she said, rolling her eyes good naturedly. “And I’m _so_ not impressed. I’m going to start a bad pun jar for you. Like a swear jar but worse and I think you owe at least twenty quid on the cunning linguist bit. For someone with no kids, you sure make a lot of dad jokes.”

He smiled sadly. “Yeah.” The words shouldn’t have stung, but they did. Rose had no way of knowing the specifics of the family he’d lost; that particular detail was one the Doctor had chosen to leave out when he’d told her the story of the Time War. He wanted to tell her he’d been a dad once, and that a tiny part of him hoped maybe she’d make him one again someday, but it seemed too much, too soon. He might have been an alien but he’d watched enough trashy television to know that bringing up kids during sex was probably a mood killer. That was a conversation best saved for another day, when he could properly explain the genetic looms and just why manual reproduction had been forbidden on his home planet and use that as a natural segue to tell her about his family and his past and discuss their future together.

Rose knew him too well though, well enough to see the brief flicker of melancholy on his face before he was able to shake it off. “You alright? You looked sad. Thinking about the TARDIS again?”

“Yeah,” he said, nodding solemnly. “The TARDIS, and the other tragic losses of the day. Mainly the loss of your sense of human, because that cunning linguist joke deserved at least half a smile.”

“Oh shut up!” she howled, lobbing a pillow at him, which he just managed to duck with the sauciest of grins on his face.“I know I said being stuck with you isn’t so bad, but I think I’m about to revise my opinion on that.”

He shrugged. “Well too late, you’re stuck with me now. You need me to cosign your mortgage, remember? Besides, there’s no point in being grown up if you can’t act a little childish sometimes.”

“That’s fair,” she said, sucking suggestively on her index finger. “In that case, you may be a cunning linguist, but I’m a master debater.”

He chuckled, shaking his head. “Touché. I deserved that. So alright, you weren’t impressed by the cunning linguist joke, that’s fine, I’ve got another for you. What’s the difference between light and hard?”

“I’m not sure I want to know, but I’m sure you’re going to tell me,” she sighed, the sigh of the long suffering (and loving every moment of it). “And if I think it’s not funny I’m going to slap you so hard you may regenerate.”

Winking, he ducked between her legs. “You can sleep with a light on.”


End file.
